Tuesday July 22, 2014
4:21 PM Eastern Daylight Time
The Nest- Front Entrance
Indianapolis, Indiana
“Well?!” came the demand as the front door swung open to allow an exhausted Wendy to trudge inside. Wendy blinked, looking at her daughter, who had perched herself on the second-bottom stair like some bird of prey waiting for a mouse to happen by. She should have expected that she’d have been waiting.
“I honestly don’t know, Theresa. Terrence is with Fireball right now” Wendy said shaking her head. She was doubly lucky on that front- Terrence had just happened to be on his way from North Marion when she had called him, and had agreed to meet her at the vet- which also fortunately wasn’t too far from The Nest. That was thankful- driving down the road on a Vespa with a puppy in critical condition in her carry-basket was one of the most harrowing experiences of her life. Luckily she had made it in fairly short time, arriving just after Terrence had.
And then Terrence had promptly sent her back home, under the pretense that they’d never left Theresa home alone before. That was true, but she was now eight, and the time had probably come when she could take care of herself for an hour or two. The real reason, she suspected, was that she had a feelign Terrence didn’t trust her to make the right decisions where the dog was concerned.
Not that she was complaining. The tension had been suffocating in the Vet’s office, and while it was hardly better here with Theresa, at least she wasn’t experiencing things first hand. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to handle that.
“When are we going to know?” Theresa asked again, her voice still rather short. Wendy blinked in surprise. It wasn’t like Theresa to be so abrupt, especially with her. Then again, her daughter was stressed, probably more so than she’d ever been in her short life before.
“I… I don’t know, Theresa,” Wendy said again with a sigh. “Dad said he was going to call the moment he knew, but I don’t know how long that’s going to be. Now come on, you can have a popscicle.”
Sullenly, the brown-haired girl leapt down from the steps, following her mom into the kitchen. Wendy opened the freezer, finding the Box of Good Humor, and reaching inside. “What kind-”
“Grape.”
Wendy blinked once, taken aback at being rudely interrupted, but again she shrugged it off. Using the freezer light to look through the wrapping, she found a purple one, handing it to her daughter, who simply snatched it away. She didnt unwrap the popscicle, instead staring at it, as if unsure what to do. Then she looked back up. “So is Fireball going to die?”
“I don’t know,” Wendy said, the most honest answer she could bear to give. By the time she had gotten to the vet, Fireball had stopped whimpering, but was still trembling, although a bit less. She didn’t think that was an improvement. “I hope not.”
“Why? I thought it’s what you wanted.”
“What..?” Wendy looked over at Theresa, caught off guard. She was surprised by the glare on Theresa’s face. Her daughter wasn’t worried… she was FURIOUS.
“You should be happy, Mom. Now you don’t have to send her away.”
“How did you-” Wendy blurted, before catching herself. Well, that was as much an admission of guilt as anything, she knew. So she remained silent.
“I heard you telling Dad about it through the door a couple months ago,” Theresa said crossly. “If you didn’t like Fireball by the end of July, we’d get rid of her. You still don’t like her. You never even TRIED to like her. The entire time you were just waiting til the end of July to get rid of her!”
“That’s not true-” Wendy began.
“BULLSHIT!” Theresa snapped, tears coming to her eyes, as Wendy dropped the apple she was now cutting from rampant shock. “I saw the way you looked at her! You hated her! You always hated her! Well, now she’s going to die and I HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY!”
Her voice failed her and she stormed out of the room, breaking into sobs.
“Theresa... Theresa! THERESA! STOP!” Wendy ran after her, grabbing Theresa by the shoulder to arrest her, and spin her around, feeling pain from the glare of hatred in her daughter’s eyes. “Theresa… I’m sorry, okay? I was too busy focusing on my dislike of dogs to realize how special Fireball was to you. I didn’t see it until today. I saw how much she loved you… how much she wanted to protect you. And I’m sorry that I was so closed minded about it.”
Theresa’s face became stony. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“I don’t know…” Wendy confessed. “But Theresa, I promise… if Fireball survives and comes home… I won’t send her away.”
“Great, Mom.” came the sarcastic reply. “Thanks for letting me keep a dog that’s probably going to die.” She stormed up the stairs, sniffling, wiping her eyes.
This time, Wendy let her go, sighing and coming back to the kitchen. Her daughter was furious at her, and justafiably so. One more reason to hope the dog lived, because if it died, it would create an even wider rift between her and her daughter, she could tell. But the conflicting emotion kept ringing in her head, one that she felt above anything else, but didn’t dare to voice to Theresa.
As sad as she was about what happened to Fireball… she was infinitely times more thankful that it wasn’t her daughter who was bitten. The dog may have saved her life- at the expense of its own. And that just made her feel worse about the entire thing.
So she went back to coreing her apple, pausing long enough to take her phone out of her pocket and set it on the counter, staring at it, waiting for Terrence to call. She didn’t even bother getting a plate, or any of the caramel dip she had bought, instead choosing to just stare at her phone. She knew she probably needed to go back to match scouting, watch Mika’s match with Valerie Lamb again, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to focus. So she just stared at the phone, munching on her apple.
It rang just as she was reaching for the core to toss it in the garbage. Wendy’s breath left her, and she stared at the display, confirming that it was indeed her husband on the line. For a second, she considered ignoring it, letting it go to voicemail, and waiting to hear until Terrence got home. But she couldn’t do that, she had to know, and more importantly, Theresa deserved to know as soon as possible.
Her hand trembling so much she couldn’t fathom how she was going to hold the device, she reached out for it, miraculously picking it up and pressing the answer button, holding it to her ear.
“Hello?”
=====================
Saturday July 26, 2014
3:38 PM Pacific Daylight Time
JW Mariott Los Angeles- Room 718
Los Angeles, California
”So it turns out that the La Brea Tar Pits aren’t exactly the best place to stage a wrestling promo, which was Wendy’s plan A for the day. But, stinky, and hot, and rather not being sunburned before the biggest match of the year, Wendy decided to retreat back to her hotel, just a hop skip and jump away from the Staples Center. And it’s here we find her, sitting on her hotel room’s couch, wearing a sleveless black dress with green trimming. She wastes no time as the camera fades up, but instead dives right on in.”
“So I’m going to tell you all a bit of a story here, and, well, I’m going to warn you, it doesn’t paint me in they best of lights, but I think its important. You know, for a while I’ve been suspecting that fate seems to want to wait to spring the most stressful moments of my personal life until just before the biggest matches of my professional life. ...Has anyone else in the locker room experienced this? Or is it just me… cause it’s felt that way for almost a year now…”
Wendy realizes she’s getting a bit off track here, and takes a minute to focus herself before going into her story.
”Anyways, I’m not really a dog person. I’m not going to get into specifics here on the whys, because they’re not important, and I’m sorry about offending any dog lovers among the FFW Faithful… I’m sure there’s a lot. So I’m most of you could understand that when my husband brought home a dog without my permission a couple months ago… I’m sure most of you could understand that I was a bit irritated.”
“I’ve felt I’ve been in a war with Fireball- that’s the dogs name- for the better part of two months now. Somehow, she seemed to find every single little button she possibly could to irritate the living heck out of me. I’ve wanted that dog gone. I mean… that’s probably been my number two motivation over the past couple of months, after winning the FFW Championship. I wanted that mutt GONE.”
Wendy’s voice takes a softer edge, and she looks down at the floor, taking a deep breath to steady herself
”And then last Tuesday, just a few days ago… Theresa was playing in the yard and there was… there was this rattlesnake, out in the open… I don’t know what it was doing there… but… *sigh*... Fireball got between Theresa and the snake, and protected her from it, keeping that snakes attention on her until I could get down there and… take care of the situation. Even though, somehow… in the midst of all that, she’d gotten bitten, and she continued to stand there, no matter what, as the poison seeped into her blood…”
Wendy’s voice trails off as it hits a definite catch, and she sniffles, before chancing one more line…
”I can safely say now… thank GOD we had that dog… it could have been my daughter getting bit instead…”
Wendy’s voice catches again, and she reaches over grabbing a handkerchief and dabbing at her eyes, taking another couple moments to steady herself.
”It’s that old maxim- ‘be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it’. I wanted my house back to normal, I wanted Fireball gone, and it was only then that I realized that I was wrong… oh so wrong.”
“Luckily… it wasn’t too late for Fireball, thank God. We got her to the vet quick enough, and he managed to neutralize the venom, and save her, and… while she’s certainly going to need some time to recover, but she’s going to live. And you can bet there’s a place in my house for Fireball from here on out.”
Did you really think I was just going to leave you hanging on the outcome? Wendy’s much more composed now, even smiling somewhat, albeit a little shaky.
”But since Tuesday, that phrase has been turning over and over in my head. ‘Be careful what you wish for.’ It’s a phrase that we’ve heard almost ad nauseum since we were kids, but it’s one that we still can’t grasp until we’re faced with the consequences. And the same goes for the the flipside of the coin, another maxim that’s as old as time itself… so known that The Who made a song about it. ‘You can’t always get what you want, but you might get what you need.” The two sayings just seem to go hand and hand, don’t they?”
Various entities in the world are now calling for Wendy Briese’s head for confusing The Who and the Rolling Stones. But at least she doesn’t think Pearl Jam did The Dark Side Of The Moon. Anymore…
”And just as much as the first saying’s rang so true for my personal life over the past couple of months, more and more I’m realizing that the second has applied to my wrestling career just as much. I don’t think that’s a secret. I mean… I TRIED to pretend it was otherwise, but I’m pretty sure everyone else saw through it, so I’m doubting this is going to be much of a shock. I wanted Scarlett to have the title going into Unstoppable. I wanted Wendy vs. Scarlett one on one for the biggest title in wrestling at the biggest show of the year. It would have been incredible. The atmosphere, the fans, the respect, the competition. But of course, that’s not going to be happening. My dream match has been replaced by a bout with Mikalea Demidov.”
Wendy pauses for just a second, but it’s obvious that this is a subject she finds distasteful
”Right. Mika Demidov is not on my list of dream matches. In fact,if I had retired from wrestling without ever facing her, I doubt I’d feel any less fulfilled. I’d even go so far as to say that the less a wrestler deals with Mika Demidov, the more enjoyable their life probably is. The woman is THAT unpleasant to deal with in any capacity, whether it’s watching her, listening to her, or actually facing her. But she is the FFW Champion. I’m the number one contender. It’s the biggest show of the year, it’s my time to take that shot. So a match we shall have.”
“So yeah… You can’t always get what you want, and in terms of a dream match I didn’t. But the more and more I think about it, the more and more I’m wondering if maybe, just MAYBE I’m actually getting what I NEEDED here.”
Wendy looks up at the ceiling for a second, before exhaling and continuing
”I love those big glitzy glittery marquee dream matches. I love the atmosphere they produce and the way the fans react. Going up against someone like Scarlett, or Valerie, or Isabella or Tara, no feeling like it in the world, all the way through. But I think about it, and maybe I get a bit TOO caught up in the moment there. A bit starstruck, a bit blinded by the lights, and I think maybe that’s cost me a bit from time to time. So maybe considering that this is my big rematch that I’ve waited six months for, maybe it’s better I DONT have an opponent I lie awake at night thinking how awesome it’s going to be to face them. Maybe it’s better I’m not watching scouting match tapes with wistful sighs thinking how awesome this is going to be. Maybe it’s better that I instead watch those tapes with narrow eyes and disdainful snorts and the ever-growing knowledge that I am now on a MISSION that has a higher purpose than my own pride.”
“I’m good in these situations, really. When I know that the consequences of losing are far greater than bragging rights for someone else or another worthy champion that just doesn’t happen to be me. When the honest to God respect and dignity and integrity of this company, or even a division is on the line, that’s when I step up. I helped stymie the A-List. I saved the No Surrender Division from Starla McCloud and Alex Adonis by taking that title back from them and their stunts. I knocked the Power Trip’s representative out of the 2012 Femme For All. When I returned from my injury and took the Power Trip head on, I took each and every one of them that I faced out. I kept Aimee Easter and her T.R.U.T.H nonsense from coming anywhere CLOSE to the FFW Championship… and now?”
“And now I have to save the FFW Championship from Mika Demidov. Because every day she holds that belt is a black eye on this company and all the honest, hard working women who compete here.”
One would think Wendy almost smiles here, but on closer look, its more a grimace, one of determination and duty
”This is your cue, Mika, of course. This is where you start chirping in that annoying screechy, whiny little Russian accented voice of yours about how nobody gives you any respect… and how you’re being overlooked… and how your accomplishments are being diminished and… dear God, I can’t handle it.”
Wendy takes a deep breath, and exhales, keeping her lips together so that she makes a motoroboat sound, shaking her head in exasperation
”First of all, Mika, understand one thing here. This isn’t about your in ring ability. Nobody’s disputing that, because we’ve seen what you can actually do in the ring. You beat Camilla Pazzini twice… that’s no small feat. You beat Valerie Lamb… that’s no small feat. You beat Scarlett Kincaid… dear God, is there even another woman on the active roster right now who can say that they did that one on one? Your in ring wrestling ability is fine. More than fine. You’re one of the best in the company. But that’s not the crux.”
“In the last two months, Mika, exactly how much time have you spent in an FFW ring wrestling in matches? An hour? Maybe more? There was what… the main event at Relentless… and your match against Val so… an hour… an hour and a quarter. Seems about right. That’s about what I have… probably on par with most the women in the company, to be honest.”
Wendy had been counting on her hands, trying to figure out exactly how long Mika has spent in the ring. That mission accomplished, she lowers them back into her lap, her eyes now never leaving the camera.
So the question is… what exactly have you been doing for the OTHER one thousand three hundred and forty-three hours since then? Sleeping. Eating. Travelling. Training. Team Kyle Meetings. And of course making a complete and utter fool out of yourself.”
“I was at the SVW Uprising a few weeks ago in Lincoln, sitting in the crowd. I saw you beat Chris Kane by whapping him in the head with the title belt. But I’ll always remember how when you and Nessa were running with your tails between your legs from Misty Whitmore, somehow still acting like you had accomplished something great, the woman sitting behind me turned to her friend and said ‘Can you believe SHE is the FFW Champion?’ And then they both giggled in that annoying girly mockery fashion.”
Wendy pauses, taking another deep, calming breath and exhaling, although it’s noticable how much her face suddenly has flushed red, as if embarassed.
”I don’t think they knew that was me sitting in front of them, thankfully. But I remember how badly my face burned sitting there, listening to them laugh at the fact that YOU were our champion. And the worst part is… there’s nothing I really COULD say… they were right. You’re our champion. And there’s nothing I could do about that. At least at the time.”
“Well, now there is. There is very much something I can do about that now, Mika, and I fully intend on doing it tonight. I’m going to take that belt off you, and I’m going to put it around my waist. But even more than that, I’m going to be putting it back around the waist of someone who understands the burden and responsiblity that the FFW Championship actually carries. Someone who understands that being FFW Champion isn’t a part time job, but something that has to be upheld 24/7. You dont get to just slide into some rival company and act like a complete idiot.”
“But this is EXACTLY what I was talking about back in January when I was facing Aimee Easter. The climb up the mountain, the journey to the FFW Championship- it’s not supposed to be an easy one. You’re supposed to have setbacks. You’re supposed to make sacrifices. You’re supposed to get into situations where you doubt yourself. Only through hell and high water and every last test of your resolve are you supposed to arrive at the top. That’s how you come to appreciate that this belt truly means.”
For a second, Wendy’s eyes flash, and she looks as if someone was actually interrupting her, even though she’s the only one in the hotel room.
“And don’t even protest, Mika. You had it easy. Compared to Scarlett, Val, myself… even Isabella? Oh God yes, you’ve had it easy. The entire time you’ve been here, you’ve taken… what… five matches seriously? Five whole matches where you put on your big girl tights and actually cared about winning more than antagonizing everyone? And yeah, you won four of those five, and that’s why you’re here, and that’s why you’re have the belt, and congratulations and all, but it does NOT excuse the other fifteen or so matches you’ve been in.”
“No, Mika, it doesn’t excuse your decision to be absolutely obnoxious during your first run with your ‘Unbeatable, unstoppable… whatever’ lunacy. It doesn’t excuse the stupidity you subjected Jo and Misty to, when they still manage to overcome you. It DEFINITELY does not excuse the hell you put Freya through, up to and including ATTEMPTING TO END HER CAREER FOR NO GOOD REASON. It doesn’t excuse the childlike hystrionics you showed after losing to Scarlett in the Femme For All, and it doesn’t excuse you petulantly throwing the rest of your team under the bus after you guys BLEW Ten Femme Chaos.”
Wendy pauses, and takes a deep breath, shaking her head
”Your mistake, Mika, is that you thought the FFW Championship was going to be validation. You thought the moment that belt came around your waist, it was going to just magically wipe everything else away. Everything you’ve done, every stunt you pulled is immediately excused because you beat Scarlett Kincaid at Relentless. Yeah… no. That’s not how it works. That’s NEVER been how it works. Carrying the Holy Grail into a junkyard doesn’t magically turn it into a Ferrari dealership.”
“No, it just means now we have a Holy Grail sitting in a junkyard. A thing of great beauty surrounded by a wasteland of ugliness, placed there carelessly by someone who just doesn’t get it. Someone who doesn’t understand the basic concepts of cause and effect. Like maybe when you spend months disrespecting the FFW Championship and the last three people who have held it… you’re just setting yourself up for rejection.”,
Wendy’s voice softens slightly, her visage relaxing.
”I already told you Mika, that I have respect for your ability. I know what you can do in the ring, especially when you bother to take the match seriously. You don’t even do that. You said point blank back in February that beating Valerie Lamb- former FFW Champion and charter Hall of Fame Inductee Valerie Lamb, yes, that one- wasn’t anything to be proud of. You called me- former FFW Champion and second year Hall of Fame Inductee- mediocre. And you called Scarlett- former FFW Champion and also second year Hall of Fame Inductee- weak and irrelevant. The three FFW Champions prior to you, all belittled and downplayed by your own words. And yet you wonder why your own reign is viewed through so many glazed eyes?”
“See, in this business, there’s a difference between being a champion and someone who simply holds a belt. And you’re providing an excellent case study on this, Mika. You dont’ present yourself as a champion. Instead you present yourself as a petty, petulant, vindictive brat sitting on a throne and using her status as justification to act like even more of a petty, petulant, vindictive brat. A champion brings honor to the belt they hold, and you don’t do that, and no amount of shreiking, and raging, and overtly lavish ceremonial grandstanding is going to change that.”
Wendy leans forward, looking into the camera, her voice lowering slightly as she enunciates her words a bit more clearly, making sure her point is driven home.
”Here’s the big difference between you and I, Mika. You view respect as some tappable natural resource that you drill for and exploit. It’s why every other week you’re stomping your foot, clenching your fist, and DEMANDING that people show you more respect. And you don’t get it, so you think that being louder and more obnoxious, that’ll work, as if respect is something that can be extorted. And in the event that you DO somehow get some respect… like say… beating the FFW Champion in the middle of the ring to take her title- you find a way to immediately squander it by becoming flat out unbearable in the aftermath.
Me, on the other hand… I’ve never ONCE demanded respect from anyone. I never screamed. I never raged about it. I just GOT IT. I got it by taking every single match I’ve ever been in seriously, whether I was facing Scarlett Kincaid or Charity Deas, and putting everything I had out in that ring. I got it because whenever I win, I don’t need to jump up and down shrieking ‘looklooklook!’ because I know that what I just accomplished speaks for itself. And I got it because, whether or not people agree with my philosophies, they know that I BELIEVE in them, and that I stick to them. THAT is what got me respect. The same goes for Scarlett, Val, Eileen, Caroline. They don’t have to demand it either. They get it as well, because of their actions in the ring. Notice a trend?”
“And you just HATE that, don’t you Mika? It absolutely GALLS you that the respect of both fans and peers comes to me so effortlessly while you have to snarl and growl to obtain a single scrap. I get respect, Mika, because I know how to give it. But more importantly, I get respect.. because I GET IT. You don’t, because you don’t.”
Wendy shakes her head, a measure of some sadness in her eyes, although hardly any pity.
”No, Mika, you don’t get it. It absolutely astounds me how much you don’t get it despite the fact that you’ve been in this sport for quite a while now. Like an almost Crystal Hilton-esque failure to grasp the concept of actions and consequences. Like the idea that when you are as obnoxious as possible, people aren’t happy when you win, and they’re absolutely DELIGHTED when you lose.
I’ll always remember the meltdown you had on Twitter after you lost to Scarlett in the Femme For All. You honest to God thought your CAREER was over because you lost to SCARLETT KINCAID. But I’ll always remember the most your first tweet, the first time after you lost, when you basically e-screamed ‘GO AHEAD AND LAUGH!’”
Wendy shakes her head again, although this time more with disgust.
“Kind of turned into something of a motif for you in 2014, too. The idea that people have been laughing at you. When you retained the Pride Championship… ‘Who’s laughing now?’. When you won the FFW Championship… ‘who’s laughing now?’. So let me clue you in on a little secret, Mika. Those people back in November who were laughing? They still are. They still laughed when you won the Pride Championship. They laughed when you won the FFW Championship. They’ll laugh tonight, whether you win or lose. And they laugh because that’s what you’re SUPPOSED to do with clowns.”
“And yes, Mika, you are a clown. You don’t dress in motley, and you don’t wear the facepaint, but everything about you is so over the top, so melodramatic, so hysterical that it’s almost like a circus, to the point that I almost expect Kelly McGuffin to start swinging on a trapeze in the background of your promos. It’s a spectacle when you win, its a meltdown when you lose, and it’s a parade of outrageousness in between. It’s not even funny. It’s not entertaining to watch, because every aspect of it just screams desperate plea for attention.”
“Think about that for a second. Our supposed champion, the woman who holds the FFW title, the top prize in all of women’s professional wrestling, the pinnacle of our sport, STILL has to resort to outrageous theatrics to get people to notice her.”
Another pause, and Wendy takes another deep breath, although this time it’s clear she’s seething. She’s rather annoyed.
“I’ll never forget the little stinger you threw in during your promo for your match at Relentless, Mika. ‘Can You See Me Now?’ I can actually see you walking around repeating that endlessly, like the guy in those Verizon commercials. Here’s the answer, Mika. We can. Every one of us can see you. It’s just we don’t like what we see. You’re such a train wreck, we can’t even look at you, we have to turn our heads away.”
“I can just picture you sitting there watching this, Mika. Your face is probably scrunched up, your eyes narrowed, your face is probably red. And you’re probably thinking. ‘UGH! I hate her! She has no right to judge!’ And you know, maybe I am being a bit harsh, but at this point I kind of feel like I have to be. There’s only so much I can take of someone so dedicated to being a buffoon becoming the face of this company. There’s only so much of your attitude I can take before I have to put my foot down and say ‘no. That’s not right. This is all wrong.’ And with you Mika, pretty much EVERYTHING is wrong. Right down to the statement you hilariously made back in February… what was it? Hang on, I wrote it down… oh yes.. This gem.”
Wendy reaches into her purse on the side, and pulls out a piece of paper, unfolding it and reading
”‘You, Briese, are one of the flagbearers of everything that’s wrong in this company. YOU’ve made people believe that it’s okay to judge people on their choices’”
Wendy looks back up, and bursts out laughing, shaking her head incredulously, lightly smaking her forehead.
“Well, DUH, Mika. Choices and actions are what you’re SUPPOSED to judge people on. Everybody is judgemental, Mika, including you. It’s a part of human nature and its a GOOD THING. I love it when someone like you likes to paint it like the inquisition. Like I’m some high priestess who walks into the locker room, sniffs haughtily and goes ‘you don’t do things my way so you’re a terrible person, and off with your head.’ That’s not what it is… that’s not what it is at all.”
“It’s called critical thinking Mika. It’s taking the actions of others, and applying them to your own set of values, and determine what is good and what is bad. And yes, Mika sometimes if you see something wrong, if you see something bad, and shouldn’t be going on, then yes, it may be worth fighting for, and you should speak out against it. Yes you should try and put a stop to it, because that is a good and decent thing to do.”
“See, when you say you don’t want people to JUDGE you, Mika, what you’re really saying is you don’t want to face CONSEQUENCES. You want all of the freedom with none of the responsibilities. You want to pick on colleagues and make their lives hell without any comeppance. You want to run your mouth as much as you want without anyone telling you in no uncertain terms that you’re wrong and… Dear God you’re wrong. So very wrong.”
“But at least you’re HONEST, right?”
Wendy smirks, almost mockingly, shaking her head with disdain.
”I always love that line. The quintessential calling card of the uncreative villian looking to justify themselves. ‘At least I’m honest about what I am’. Or… even better, ‘at least I’m not being a hypocrite about it’. Like that somehow excuses everything or makes it all better. I can hurt whoever I want as long as I freely admit it, because then I’m not a hypocrite!”
“Except… no. You’re not honest Mika, no more than Dante Knox is. For crying out loud, KATE STEELE is more honest than you, because at least she admits she has a problem.”
“I think the word you’re looking for is SHAMELESS, Mika. Thats the word for when you freely admit wrongdoing with no sense of remorse or apology. And there is no honesty in shamelessness, Mika, because it implies that somehow it’s all acceptable just so long as you’re open about it. Its not, Mika, and you’re only kidding yourself if you even think otherwise.”
“Or rather, you’re just trying to put up another smokescreen to avoid dealing with consequences again. That’s not going to work tonight, Mika. Tonight, you’re facing the music. Tonight, there’s not going to be anywhere for you to run or hide.”
Wendy leans forward in her seat again, and there’s that ever-familiar flame of intensity in her emerald eyes
Like I said earlier, Mika. Be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it. You wished very hard for that FFW Championship because you thought it was going to give you the respect you thought you deserved. And now you have it, Mika. So have you gotten that respect? What has changed? Absolutely nothing, because you failed to realize the whole time it was never about your ability, it was all about your attitude. You never changed that, so your circumstances never changed.”
And now your time’s ran out, Mika. Your two months is up. The Mika Demidov experiment has run its course and the results are found to be lacking. It failed because YOU failed to understand the magnamity and responsibility of the honor that was being bestowed onto you. You only saw the golden trinket with the word “champion” written on it and that’s EXACTLY what you have treated it as the past fifty-six days. A golden trinket. Just another bragging right from just another company.
Another deep breath, this time through the nose, as Wendy glares into the camera. When she speaks again, her voice is a bit clipped.
”Well you got it. You got your bragging right. You beat Scarlett, you won the title, you had your parade and etched into the history books. I can’t take that away from you. No body can. But I CAN, and I WILL take your title. I CAN and I WILL take your status. And I CAN and I WILL take the future of this company and place it on MY back for the time being because I will actually CARRY it higher and higher instead of DRAGGING it down over a petty sense of insecurity.”
“Because I know more than anyone else what that belt means because I’ve been chasing it for so long. I’ve been chasing it for my entire career- nine long years. Think about that, Mika. I’ve hunted the FFW Championship for longer than it even EXISTED because its not the gold or the leather or even the initials stamped on it that make it worth seeking, it is the CONCEPT ITSELF that makes it worth seeking, even if there wasn’t a physical presence to go with it. And just because it took so long for me to find the company that embodied that dream, doesn’t mean I wasn’t searching for it. Because this is TRULY the shining city on the hill where women’s wrestling is concerned. Especially for someone who had to swim the mysogonyst-shark infested waters of the early millenium, and fight tooth and nail just to survive because of her gender, to know what a special place this is.”
Wendy pauses again, taking several deep breaths, calming herself again, as she clearly had emotion in her voice.
”And tonight, Mika, that belt comes home with me. I have no excuses. I’ve had today circled on my calendar for the better part of six months now, and I’m ready. I’ve been getting ready ever since I looked over the lip of the apron and saw Scarlett getting the three count. I’ve been getting ready ever since you won and became champion. I had a great run with the belt the first time, but I know I can do so much more. I know what I can bring to that championship, especially as we prepare to travel around the world, and I want to bring the crown jewel of women’s wrestling around the world as an ambassador.”
“And you can’t stop me, Mika. There’s nothing you can say, because you’ve spewed so much garbage that everyone now knows that your words are little more than hollow bitter slander. There’s nothing you can do because as good as you are, you’re not going to be able to stop someone as focused and driven as me. And there’s nothing Kyle Kilmeade or any of your cronies in Team Kyle can do, because I’m NOT going to allow them to stand in my way anymore than I’m going to allow you to.”
Wendy goes to stand up, the camera following her as she looks down at the tripod, a small smile forming on her face.
”You can’t always get what you want, Mika. I know that all too true, but you know what? Sometimes you do. And tonight, I’m going to get what I want. The fans are going to get what they want. But more importantly?”
“FFW is going to get exactly what it NEEDS.”
And with those parting words, Wendy turns and walks away from the camera, breathing heavily in excitement. And with that… the scene fades to black.
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